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Rise of Islam
The '''Rise of Islam' lasted from about 565 AD until 768 AD. It began with Rome and Persia rumbling towards a chronic and inevitable war, that left both empires exhausted and vulnerable to a new predatory rival; the armies of Islam. It then ended on the eve of the reign of the towering figure of early medieval Europe; the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne. In the early 7th-century, Arabia became the cradle of one of the great world religions. There are perhaps three startling things about Islam. The first thing is of course the spiritual genius of the Prophet Muhammad. It is said that while praying in a cave outside Mecca, he was visited for the first time by the voice of God, and for twenty-two years recited the truth revealed to him. The result was one of the great formative books of mankind, the Qur'an. As a spiritual leader Muhammad founded a faith that has shown greater expansive and adaptive power than any other religion except Christianity, appealing to peoples as different and as distant from one another as Nigerians and Indonesians. As a political leader he helped to unite all the disparate tribes of Arabia for the first time in its history. The second startling thing about Islam is the speed and extent of the Arab conquests. The Muslim tide seemed invincible, born as it was on the fire of religious zeal, destined to spread Islam by the sword throughout the world. Circumstances certainly favoured the Arabs; their first victims, the Byzantine and Persian empires, had been left exhausted and vulnerable by the devastating Roman-Persian War (602-628). By the mid-8th-century, just over a century after the Prophet's passing, the results were an empire stretching from Spain on the Atlantic coast, to the Oxus River of Central Asia. That tide did not flowed without interruption. There was a lull during bitter Muslim against Muslim fighting prior to the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661; a civil war whose consequences are still with us in the schism between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam. Only in one campaign can the Arab armies be said to have definitively failed; the conquest of Constantinople, unsuccessfully besieged in 674 and 717. Whatever brought the Islamic conquests to an end, and sometimes their defeats such as at Tours in 732 showed they had overextended themselves, they remain an extraordinary achievement, comparable in the Middle Ages only with the Mongol conquests of the 13th-century. The third startling thing about Islam is their ability to consolidate their conquests into a cultivated, wealthy, and highly civilised Muslim empire. While the Germanic peoples degraded the Roman civilisation they conquered and ruled, Muslims newly arrived in Byzantine or Persian lands openly embraced existing techniques of administration and the intellectual heritages. If the Byzantine Empire, the ''Barbarian Kingdoms'', and the Christian Church are three of the inheritors of the Roman Empire, then the Muslim world made a fourth. And for a long time it was the most magnificent of them all. Under the Abbasid Caliphate, it would enjoy an effervescence of culture and learning unlike anything that had been seen since Classic Greece. History Early Roman-Persian War (565-602 AD) By the end of the Justinian the Great's reign, the Byzantine Empire was enjoying an economic boom. An array of well-built stone churches were being built across Syria; irrigation was pushing agriculture out into the desert fringes of Palestine; and a substantial new city was founded at the birthplace of the Justinian (today Lebane in Serbia). A network of commercial routes criss-crossed the eastern Mediterranean linking all the major trading centres. After Justinian’s western reconquests, north Africa, Sicily, and Italy were connected into it too. It does not seem to have been affected more than marginally by the Plague of Justinian, the most serious epidemic to hit Europe before the Black Death. Yet Justinian bequeathed to his successors many problems: an imperial treasury and army under severe strain in the wake of the plague, and a delicate diplomatic balancing-act needed to maintain peace with the empire's enemies. Despite his many wars, Justinian's policy had often been to buy peace, paying an annual tribute to both the Sassanid Persians and two new barbarian groups on the Danube frontier. The first was the Avar Khaganate (567-822), a confederacy of Turkic steppe nomads which swept westwards from southern Russia, to dominated the north of the Danube as the successors of the Huns. The second group was the Slavs, a forest people from the heavily wooded region east of original German settlement areas. The story of the Slav peoples has been traced back at least as far as the first millennium BC, but much is still obscure. They spread slowly both west and east, into what is now Czechia and Slovakia and especially into Russia, probably because of their primitive agricultural practice of cutting and burning, exhausting the soil in two or three years and then moving on. Geography makes for confusion, since Slav Europe covers a spaces where nomadic invasions from Central Asia left things very fluid long after Germanic societies had settled down in the West. In the 5th-century, Slavs from both the western and eastern groups began to move south into the Balkans. For the Byzantines, the Avars and Slavs were different from their Hunnic predecessors; they came not only to raid and extort tribute, but to settle on imperial lands. What was needed to preserve Justinian's accomplishments were wise and forceful emperors, and good fortune. Neither would materialise, with Justinian's successors adopting short-sighted policies that would, within a generation, bring the empire to the very edge of collapse. His nephew and immediate successor, Justin II (565-574), opted to preserve the imperial treasury, immediately halting tribute payments to the Avars, and later to Sassanid Persia. His intransigence only increased the menace to the empire. In the east, war ensued during which the Persians captured the strategically important fortress of Dara on the upper Euphrates, and ravaged Syria in two disastrous raids. In the west, the aggressive Avar reaction was decisive in persuading one Germanic group north of the Danube that it was prudent to leave the region. In the spring of 568, the Lombards, under their greatest leader Alboin (d. 572), migrated en-masse into Byzantine Italy. They were the most unreconstructed barbarians to date; Theodoric's Ostrogoth had been highly Romanized. The Lombard found a green and fertile land, still devastated and depopulated from the Gothic War (535–554), and one which the Byzantines did not defend well thereafter. For the most part, the Lombards took city after city with little or no opposition from imperial forces, with the exception of Pavia, which only fell only after a three-year siege in 572, and became their capital. By then, the Lombard Kingdom (568-774) encompassed most of Italy. As his kingdom grew steadily, Alboin had appointed trusted lieutenant or family members to govern each conquered region. When Alboin was assassinated in 572 and his successor died two years later, the regional rulers failed to elect any king, and Lombard Italy fragmenting into several autonomous duchies. They would reunited periodically under a single effective ruler - Agilulf (d. 616), Rothari (d. 652), and Liutprand (d. 744) - usually in response to foreign threats, only to soon split-up again. The Byzantines meanwhile retained control of Ravenna, Rome, Naples, and the coastal south, that could be supplied by the imperial fleet. This may seem unimpressive, but in fact the Lombards quickly became thoroughly Romanized, and their duchies were stable and well-governed. We do not see the sharp decline in urbanism and economic complexity that prevailed in the rest of western Europe. Lombard law-codes and procedures of government would later be borrowed by the Franks after Charlemagne's conquest of northern Italy in 774. By the late 6th-century, Italy was thus very fragmented, with three powers vying with one another: the Lombards, the Byzantines, and the Papacy in Rome, which, while nominally supporting Constantinople, shouldered much of the civil administration. The situation was to last throughout the Middle Ages and beyond; as Chancellor Metternich (d. 1859) famously put it, "Italy is not a country but a geographical expression". Italy was not united again until 1861. Justinian's next successor, Tiberius II Constantine (574-582), opted for a different approach. He chose between his enemies, restoring tribute payments to the Avars, while taking the fight to Sassanid Persia. Though his armies succeeded in stabilising the eastern frontier, this left the Danube denuded of defences. In 582, it proved too tempting for the Avars, who captured the important fortress of Sirmium on the Danube, a perfect launching-pad for further raids on Byzantine territory. At the same time, various Slavic peoples began to make inroads across the Danube, that would take them, within 50 years, into central Greece. The Byzantines were finally granted some respite during the reign of Maurice (582-602). His campaigned on the eastern frontier with such success that in 589 the Persian general Bahram was dismissed and humiliated by the Persian Shah Hormizd IV (d. 590). Bahram rose in revolt and the following year Hormizd was overthrown and killed by a palace coup. Hormizd son, Khosrow II (d. 628), was forced to flee to the Byzantine territory, where he appealed for help against the rebels. Although his counselors almost unanimously advised against it, Maurice agreed. At the Battle of Blarathon, a combined Byzantine-Persian army defeated and killed Bahram, and Khosrow II was restored to the throne. In gratitude for this support, Khosrow agreed to a new peace treaty, that included the return of the fortress of Dara. This allowed the two empires to focus on military matters elsewhere: Khosrau focused on the Sassanid Empire's eastern frontier while Maurice campaigned in the Balkans. By 599 the energetic emperor had pushed the Avars back across the Danube, and even sent a Roman army across the great river, for the first time in over two centuries. Yet these campaign put the empire in severe financial difficulty, and Maurice responded by trying to slash military spending. This ultimately led to his downfall when he ordered the army to stay on the north side of the Danube for the winter, living off the land. In 602, mutinous soldiers marched on Constantinople, murdered the emperor and his six sons, and putting one of their own on the throne, an obscure general called Phocas; the first coup d'état in the Eastern Roman Empire for nearly 250 years, but by no means the last. Late Roman-Persian War (602-628 AD) The reign of Phocas (602–610) was one of those disasters all too familiar in Roman history. Several senators, provincial governors, and generals refused to recognise him, and his eight years was plagued by revolts and brutal reprisals. At the same time Khosrow II seized the opportunity offered him by the murder of his benefactor, Maurice, and said he would avenge it; this was no doubt merely a pretext, for the peace treaty of 590 had been unpopular with his own subjects. The ensuing Roman-Persian War (602-628) has been called the "last world war of antiquity". In the Near East, two cultural traditions had hammered away at the one another, with relatively brief interruptions, for a thousand years, all the way back to Classical Greece and Achaemenid Persia; in the end their antagonism was fatal to both. Khosrow II began by systematically subduing the heavily-fortified cities on Byzantine-Persia frontier one after another; Dara was retaken in 605 after a nine-month siege. With Phocas facing at least two ongoing internal revolts, the Persian met little effective resistance. Once complete, his armies poured into Syria and Palestine, capturing Eddessa in 610, Antioch in 611, and Damascus in 613. With Byzantine forces hastily transferred to the east, the Balkans were once again overrun by the Slavs and the Bulgars, a Turkic people who had split from the Avars sometime after 600. This time the barbarians would never be turned back, causing Byzantines to flee for the coast in large numbers. Four centuries later, Slavs were probably numerically dominant throughout the Balkans, with the Bulgars becoming Slavicized by intermarriage and influence, thus forming the ancestors of modern Bulgarians. This was the blackest moment for Rome in all her long struggle with Persia, but a saviour was at hand. He came from north Africa, virtually the only province of the empire not fighting for its life. The provincial governor, Heraclius the Elder (d. 610), renounced his loyalty to the Emperor Phocas, and stopped the grain-shipments to Constantinople, adding famine to the city's woes. Then, feeling himself to old to be adventuring, he prepared an army and fleet under his 36-year-old son Heraclius (d. 641). Heraclius first seized Egypt, adding to his forces, before moving on towards Constantinople. As soon as his fleet was within sight of the capital, all order in the city broke-down; a mob seized Phocas, took him to the imperial docks, and laid him at Heraclius's feet, who personally beheaded him on the spot. As emperor, the greatest attribute of Heraclius (610-641) was his ability to inspire others even in the most desperate situations; the empire would have great need of this. In 614, the Persians conquered Jerusalem, burning the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and bearing away its most precious relic, the True Cross of Christ. Four years later, they seized Egypt, the economic powerhouses of the Eastern Empire; a year later still, a raid into Anatolia reached Chalcedon, only a mile across the Hellespont from Constantinople. During the same period, Avar, Slav, and Bulgar incursions were reaching as far as central Greece, Byzantine Spain was under renewed pressure from the Ostrogoths, and imperial holdings in Italy were barely holding-out against the Lombards. These disasters could be turned back at once, but Heraclius was to prove one of the greatest of the soldier-emperors. To get the populous to accept the sacrifices he would demand, he threatened to move the imperial capital to Carthage. Heraclius spent the first 12-years of his reign reorganising the remnants of the empire, and rebuilding the army. His major innovations was the introduction of the "theme system". While the imperial treasury was empty, Phocas had executed so many landowners during his bloody reign that land was plentiful, especially in Anatolia. The new Byzantine army would once again be based on farmer-soldiers, living on a chain of military estates or "themes". This was not a totally landed army as in the West, for the land was leased from the state, and army pay never ceased to be paid, though it was henceforth usually in kind. These military reforms would form the backbone of the Byzantine army until the 11th-century. Heraclius also restored solvency to the empire by slashing non-military expenditure, and melting down gold and silver donated (or demanded) from the Church. By 622, Heraclius had quietly rebuilt Byzantine strength, and was ready to mounted a remarkable and risky counter-offensive. He led the army himself, the first emperor to do so in almost 200-years, and steeped his campaign in the character of a holy war; an image of the Virgin Mary was carried before the army as a military standard. His one advantage was Byzantine sea-power, and he used it to great effect. The Persians, who expected him to use the land-route across Anatolia, were taken completely by surprise when Heraclius landed his 40,000 strong army to the north of Antioch near Issus, where Alexander the Great defeated Darius almost a thousand years earlier. He then led his army through Armenia into Persia itself, studiously keeping it as one large force; with the Persians garrisoning so much conquered territories, no single army could stand against him. The Byzantines cut a swath through northern Persia, with each victory boosting their morale. The next few years saw a series of victories against Khosrow and his generals, including the sack of the great shrine at Takht-i-Suleiman, the centre of Persian Zoroastrian fire-worship; Jerusalem had been avenged. With the Persian war effort disintegrating, Khosrow turned to diplomacy. He persuaded the Avars to besiege Constantinople on one side, while a Persian army under the general Shahin marched through Anatolia on the other. In their rivalry, the Persian had long allied with the Avars, much as the Byztantines made great efforts to keep the goodwill with another group further east, the Khazars. The Khazar Khaganate (630–969) was a huge but loose state founded by Turkic nomads, who dominated the other peoples to the north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. Byzantium seems to have tried, but failed, to convert them to Christianity. What happened exactly is a mystery, but the Khazars were apparently converted to Judaism, probably as a conscious act of diplomacy; offending neither their Christian nor Zoroastrian neighbours, and enjoying trade with both. Heraclius was now faced with the most difficult decision of his reign; returning to Constantinople would undo all the work of the last four years, while not returning could prompt the people to revolt and proclaim an anti-emperor. His solution was to split his army in three parts: the first was sent back to defend Constantinople, the second under his brother was to attack Shahin's army from the rear, while he himself would remain in Persia with the third. Though he wasn't present, the emperor had no intention of letting his capital feel abandoned, sending an avalanche of letters dealing with every aspect of the defences. It worked and moral in the city remained high, even as an 80,000 strong Avar army battered away at the mighty Theodosian Walls with their siege engines. When the news arrived that the Persian army in Anatolia had suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Heraclius's brother, the unsupported Avars finally abandoned the siege. As soon as he heard of the successful defence of Constantinople, Heraclius launched a winter offensive into the Persian heartland of Iraq, and won a hard-fought victory at the Battle of Nineveh (627). Continuing south along the Tigris, he sacked Khosrow's great palace at Dastagird, and was only prevented from attacking the former Persian capital of Ctesiphon by the destruction of the bridges. Discredited by these disasters, the Persian army mutinied, and Khosrow II was murdered in a coup led by his son, who at once sued for peace. With both empires exhausted, the peace was amicable; the Persians returned all the land they had occupied, all the prisoners held captive, and all the relics looted, including the True Cross. The long struggle with Persia was over; never again would they trouble the Byzantine Empire. When Emperor Heraclius returned to Constantinople, it was to find the entire populous waving olive branches and lit candle, as he march through the city carrying the True Cross ''to a stirring ceremony at the Hagia Sophia. It seemed the dawn of a new age, but Heraclius is early Byzantium's tragic hero. He would live long enough to see virtually all his military achievements overturned. The long and crippling war had been to the detriment of both empires, leaving them weak and vulnerable to a new predatory rival. The relic of the ''True Cross would prove powerless against the armies of Islam. Life of Muhammad (570-632 AD) Islam has shown greater expansive and adaptive power than any other religion except Christianity. It has appealed to peoples as different and as distant from one another as Nigerians and Indians, Egyptians and Indonesians. Yet none of the other great shaping factors of world history was based on fewer initial resources, except perhaps the Jewish religion. The comparisons inevitably suggests itself, for Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the great monotheistic religions. Prior to the coming of Islam, Arabia had always been a backwater on the fringes of two great empires, used as mercenaries at best, but no meaningful threat; preoccupied with one another, Persia and Rome barely had armed defences on the largely desert Arabian frontier. And Arabia had undergone little sophisticating fertilization from these higher civilizations. Those who lived there were subjected to very testing physical conditions; scorched in its hot season, most of Arabia was desert or rocky mountain. In much of it even survival was an achievement. But around its fringes there were little ports, the homes to Arabs who had been seafarers all the way back to the 2-millennium BC. Their enterprises linked the Indian Ocean trade network to the Mediterranean, bringing spices from India and gums of east Africa up the Red Sea to Egypt. The only inviting part of the Arabian Peninsula was the south (modern-day Yemen and Oman), which enjoys short but predictable monsoon rains. From the 7th-century BC this region contained a group of prosperous kingdoms. They survived until the 5th-century AD; both Islamic tradition and modern archeology link their disappearance with the collapse of the irrigation system. Arabia declined swiftly into the clan society of Muhammad’s day, based on nomadic pastoralism; the Bedouin. The life of a nomad, without architecture or possessions, other than what can be loaded on a camel, leaves few physical traces. But the richness of pre-Islamic culture was preserved for us by early Muslim scholars, who collected and recorded well-loved stories handed down in long oral tradition. This was a feuding society mired in warfare and mostly illiterate, rather similar with the early Germanic cultures. One noteworthy difference is that in Germanic tradition a chieftain was a war-leader, while a Bedouin leader was principally an arbiter of disputes. At the end of the 6th-century, new changes can be detected. At some cities and oases, population was growing; while the Plague of Justinian had decimated both the Byzantine and Persian populations, the Arabs had been insulated by the desert. Arabia could go from population growth to over-population very quickly, with no outlet for it, and this was straining traditional social practice; we see the same pattern again in 9th-century Scandinavia. Mecca and Medina (Yathrib) were two such places. Medina was a large flourishing agricultural settlement, while Mecca was an important financial and pilgrimage center; people came to it from all over Arabia to venerate at the Kaaba, a black meteoric stone which had for centuries been important in the local paganism. Mecca and Medina were also important junctions of caravan routes between the southern Arabian and Mediterranean ports. Along them came strangers and foreign ideas. While the Arabs were polytheists, believing in nature gods, demons and tribal patron deities, as intercourse with the outside world increased, Jewish and Christian communities appeared in the area. At Mecca and Medina, the growing importance of the merchant-class bringing further social strain, as commercial values clashed with the unquestioned loyalties of tribal structure. Noble blood and age had long been commensurate with social status and wealth, but this was no longer always the case. These were some of the formative psychological pressures working on young Muhammad (d. 632). He was born around 570 into a respectable but not very affluent merchant family in Mecca, belonging to the influential Quraysh clan. He was orphaned at an early age, but never lacked for the protection of his clan, and spent much of his youth among the Bedouin the caravans. As he grew up, he became a merchant, known for his honesty. His situation improved in his 20s when he married Khadija, a wealthy widow 15-years his senior, and for the next 15-years or so, lived the life of a prosperous merchant. Though said to have been about 40, his wife bore him four children who survived into adulthood, all daughters, the best known of which is Fāṭimah, the future wife of Ali, important to Shi'a Muslim. Muhammad was a deeply religious and somewhat tormented man, and developed one habit untypical of merchants. From time to time, he would withdraw into the mountains to meditate and pray. During one period of devotional withdrawal in 610 in a cave named Hira on Mount Jabal al-Nour, he began having the visions that would change his life; and world history. The Archangel Gabriel appeared to him in an awe-inspiring encounter, and relayed the word of God: “''Recite, in the name of your Lord! He who created! He created man from a clot of blood! Recite for your Lord is most generous….” These words became the opening line of the ''Sūrah chapter of one of the great formative books of mankind, the Qur'an. It is a visionary’s book, passionate in its conviction of divine inspiration. Though not collected in his lifetime, it was taken down by his followers as delivered by him in a series of revelations over 22-years; the first Caliph (successor) collected the book in one volume so that it could be preserved, and the definitive text was established about 650. Muhammad saw himself as a passive instrument, a mouthpiece of God; the word Islam means submission or surrender. He was sent to confirm the message that there is one God, that He is all-powerful but merciful and will judge all men, who may assure their salvation by following His will in their religious observance and their personal and social behaviour. This God had been preached before, for he was the God of Abraham, of Moses, of Jesus, and of other prophets. But Muhammad was sure that his position was special; though there had been prophets before him, their revelations heard by Jews and Christians who had subsequently strayed from the path of grace, he was the final Prophet. Through him, God spoke his last message to mankind. Muhammad first converts were his wife Khadija, his own cousin Ali, and his close friend Abu Bakr. After some time (traditionally 613), he began openly preaching the truth that God had revealed to him. Most Meccans ignored and mocked him, but he soon gathering a small following. But uncompromising monotheism was not a popular creed with those whose livelihood depended the pilgrim business and idol worship. Moreover, Muhammad went on to define a social and personal code that conflicted with current ideas. For example as a social tie it placed faith first before kinship by blood; the Islamic community was to be a brotherhood of believers. Persecution of Muhammad and his followers grew steadily. In 622, after being warned of a plot to assassinate him, Muhammad secretly left his home in Mecca for Medina, a city 260-miles to the north. This Hijra, or emigration, came to mark the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Conditions in Medina greatly favoured Muhammad's leadership. A civil war raged in the city, and, as a neutral outsider, he was invited to serve as chief arbiter to reconcile the hostile clans. With his newly assumed role, Muhammad became more than just a religious teacher, but the political and even military leader of the city. From the spiritual emphasis of his preaching in Mecca, Muhammad turned to the practical, that of organizing a community, with detailed statements about food, drink, marriage, and war. The result was the Five Pillars of Islam, the foundations of a Muslim life: the declaration of faith, "there is no god but God, and Muhammad is His messenger"; praying five-times daily, dawn, noon, afternoon, evening, and night; the giving of alms or charity to the poor; the observance of fasting during daytime in the holy month of Ramadan; and the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one's life, for all able-bodied people. The characteristic flavour of Islam was now being formed; a religion which was also a society and a civilisation, with no tension between Church and State such as was to shape Christian debate for a thousand years and more. It has been said that Muhammad was his own St. Peter and his own Constantine; prophet, first "Pope", and sovereign in one. Medina quickly became a strong city with standards of justice and unity never before seen in Arabia. From their newfound base, some Muslims wanted to strike back at their former oppressors, and began raiding Meccan trade caravans. By 624, there was open conflict between Mecca and Medina, and two attempts to conquer Medina, in 625 and 627, but both attempts to dislodge Muhammad failed. Then in 629, Muhammad made a bold move of negotiating a truce, that would allow the Muslims to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. On this first return to Mecca, Muhammad's followers greatly impressed the locals, both by their show-of-strength and their discipline, departing peacefully after the agreed three days. The following year, a substantial Muslim army marched on Mecca, and took the city with almost no bloodshed. A crucial element of Mecca's peaceful acceptance of Muhammad was his promise that pilgrimage to city would remain a central feature of the new religion; tradition says that Muhammad entered the Kaaba shrine and struck all the idols of other deities with his staff, which his followers were to wash out, sparing only the Virgin and Child, and the sacred stone itself. Muhammad had thus unified all the tribes of the western half of Arabia under Islam. Mecca became the holy city of Islam, while Medina remained the political centre of the developing Islamic state. He made approaches to existing Arab Jewish communities, but they refused to accept his claims; they were therefore driven-out and a Muslim community alone remained. But this did not imply any enduring conflict with either Judaism or Christianity; doctrinal ties existed in their monotheism and their scriptures, even if Christians were believed to fall into polytheism with the idea of the Holy Trinity. Muhammad continued to preach until his death in 632, and was buried at al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the Mosque of the Prophet), one of the first mosques he built in Medina. Thus the great faith of Islam was born. Muslim Conquests (632-717 AD) In the immediate aftermath of the Prophet's death, the community he had created was in grave danger of division and disintegration. All of Muhammad's children, except four daughters, had died in childhood, and there was no clear successor to Muhammad’s religious and secular authority among his followers. The likely candidates were: Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661), Muhammad's cousin and husband of his daughter Fatima; Abu Bakr (d. 634), Muhammad's closest companion and father-in-law; and Umar (d. 644), a senior and respected member of Muhammad's own clan. Ali was Muhammad's closest relative, but the Arabs were not used to a dynastic rule. As the debate grew heated, Umar hastily took Abu Bakr's hand and swore his own allegiance, an example followed by the vast majority of the gathered men; he took the title Khalifa ("Caliph") meaning "successor". Abu Bakr lived for less than two years after Muhammad's death, but within this time overcame all resistance to his authority, most notably from supporters of Ali who initially refused to acknowledge him. He went on to conquer the unreconciled tribes of southern and eastern Arabia, uniting the entire Arabian Peninsula under Islam. Abu Bakr was the first of four Muslim rulers known as the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), or "Rightly Guided" Caliphs, for both their close personal associations with Muhammad, and being unusually good leaders, generals, and administrators. This was the first of the three major chronological divisions of Islamic history - followed by the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) and Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) - that gave the Arab peoples three centuries of ascendancy until about 946. The most obvious expression of this was an astonishing series of conquests in the first century after the Prophet's passing; an era of conquest so extraordinary that only the example of the Mongols in the 13th-century can compare in the Middle Ages. The initial impetus for these attacks was no doubt to hold the Islamic community together, by preventing old tribal affiliations from resurfacing and turning resistance to the Caliphate into a war against external enemies; at least long enough to win their first victories and become united by common interest as well as common faith. It is important to be clear from the outset that some fanatical zeal to convert was not a major driver. Islam did of course spread throughout the vast Islamic Empire and beyond, but this occured over centuries, and not under any great pressure to convert. Indeed conversion was actively discouraged during some periods because it undermined the tax-base; a per-capita yearly tax called Jizya was levied on non-Muslim subjects. Beyond the Arabian Peninsula lay the great empires of Byzantium and Persia, both exhausted and hollowed-out after the devastating Roman-Persian War (602-628). What began as simple raiding for plunder, soon turned into a conquest as success bred success. The Arab-Muslim armies poured into Mesopotamia and Syria, capturing the great Byzantine city of Damascus in 634, just two years after Muhammad's passing. Emperor Heraclius (d. 641) reacted to that by raising a massive army 80,000 strong, and sending it to the region. Faced with this numerically superior force, the Arabs tactically withdrew back into the Syrian desert, with the Byzantines in slow pusuit. Heraclius himself was too ill to personally lead the army, and without his leadership, the Byzantines couldn't agree on a strategy, neither attacking nor withdrawing as the desert sun and harrying raids depleted their numbers. When a sandstorm emerged from the south, the Arabs attacked. At the resutling Battle of Yarmouk (August 636), the Byzantines were massacred almost to a man. On the heels of this victories, the Arab armies took Antioch in 637, and the greatest prize of all the next year, Jerusalem. This was a moment of profound significance for the young religion, for Islam saw itself as the successor of both Judaism and Christianity. The Temple Mount, site of both Solomon's and Herod's temples, had remained a ruin since the destruction of the temple by the Romans six centuries earlier. Here the Arab built a mosque; this original would later be replaced by a more magnificent monument, the Dome of the Rock, completed in 691. With Syria and Palestine firmly in Arab hand, the conquest of Egypt began about 640. It was as swift was it was complete. Alexandria was sufficiently well-defended to keep them at bay, but after fourteen months of siege the Byzantines agreed to give up the city in September 642; the Arabs duly allowed them one year in which to settle their affairs and leave peaceful. One of the richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire had been lost to the Muslim world with barely a fight. According to Christian tradition, the Muslims are oftem blamed for the destruction of the great Library of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world; it had in fact been lost centuries earlier, probably when Emperor Caracalla sacked the city in 215. The Arabs continued rapidly westwards along the north African coast, reaching Tripoli by 643, though this remained little more than outposts for nearly three decades until the next advance. By 640s, the Byzantines weren’t even the masters of the Mediterranean anymore. Sailors and ship-builders were brought to Alexandria from south-western Arabia, a major center of maritime trade, to create an Arab fleet. It started raiding, then conquering the islands of the eastern Mediterranean, beginning with Cyprus in 649, and won their first major naval victory against the Byzantines at the Battle of the Masts (655). During the same period, the Arab Muslim armies conquered the Sassanid Empire entirely. After the death of Khosrow II in 628, Persia had descended into four years of civil war that ended with an 8 year-old child on the throne, Yazdegerd III (632-51). The year of his coronation, his empire stretched from the Euphrates to Afghanistan and beyond; thirty years later it no longer existed. In that year the first Arab raiders arrived. The Persians never mounted any effective response until the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah (November 636). Little is known about the battle other than it lasted for four days, and on the last day, a surprise Arab cavalry attack in the centre acheived its goal of killing the Sassanid commander. This sent the exhausted Sassanid forces into a panicked retreat. At al-Qādisiyyah, the Persians lost somewhere in the region of 22,000 of best soldiers. As a result, the Arab-Muslims gained control over the whole of Iraq, the heartland of Persia. Yazdegerd fled his capital of Ctesiphon for the east over the Zagros mountains, but his empire began to fracture. The fate of the Sassanid Empire was sealed at the Battle of Nihawānd (642). A number of provincial governors attempted to combine their forces to throw back the invaders, but lacking effective leadership, were again decisively defeated. One of the great world empires was now utterly helpless. As province after province came to terms with the Arabs, the last Sassanid emperor, Yazdegerd III, fled further and further east, now little more than a fugitive until he was finally killed near Marw in 651; according to tradition, he sought refuge with a miller who murdered him for his jewelry. Thus the Sasanian Empire ended after more than 400 years of rule. A satisfying explanation for the remarkable Arab conquests is elusive; religious zeal is not enough, for armies do not win battles if generals are inexperienced and discipline is weak. Our sources, although voluminous on the Arab side, are mostly late in date. Firstly, there can be no doubt that for a long time circumstances favoured them. Their first victims, Byzantium and Persia, had both been heavily strained by the Roman-Persian War (602-628); the destruction of armies and exhaustion of taxpayers on both sides cannot have helped their resilience. While Sassanid Persia went under, the Byzantines survived but had to contend with enemies in the west as well, fending them off with one hand while grappling with the Arabs with the other. Moreover, Arab rule was often welcomed by people who were already disaffected with their rulers; for instance Byzantine administration had gone a long way to alienating the Monophysite population of Egypt. The Muslim world offered greater religious toleration, lowered taxes, more local autonomy, and peace to peoples demoralised after 40-years of crisis. Secondly, Muslim armies were recruited from hungry fighters, for whom the over-populated Arabian desert had left few alternatives, and with the Prophet's assurance that death on the battlefield against the infidel would be followed by certain removal to paradise. The Islamic social structure, with the rejection of aristocratic privilege, opened up the formula for a career based on talent. Thirdly, Muslim armies were highly mobile, and used to living always on the move. Their mastery of the desert allowed them to pick-and-choose their battles; a pattern that would be seen again with the Vikings and their mastery of the sea. Muslim armies initially fought on foot, since Arabia had few horse, but many Arabs acquired horse as booty or tribute from the earliest raid; by the Battle of Yarmouk, almost half their forces were composed of mounted cavalry. This was a considerable advantage just on the cusp of the arrival of the stirrup from China, which introduced a revolution in cavalry warfare; from the 8th-century, cavalry would be king on the battlefields, until tactics were developed in the 14th-century to mitigate its effectiveness; most famously the English longbow. And finally, the fundamental explanation for their success must be the movement of large numbers of men by a religious ideal. The Arabs thought they were doing God’s will and generated an excitement in themselves like that of later revolutionaries. The tide of Arab conquest did not flowed without interruption. The was a lull bitter Muslim against Muslim fighting in the mid-7th-century; the First Fitna (656–661). Tensions began to surface during the tenure of the third Rashidun Caliph, Uthman ibn Affan (644-656). He was a member of Umayyad clan, the very people who had opposed Muhammad at Mecca in 632. Uthman was criticized for his wealth and worldliness, as well as for appointing family-members to nearly every possible position, among them his cousin Mu'awiya (d. 680) as governor of Syria. In 656, Uthman was murdered by rioters in Medina; the first Caliph killed by a member of the faith. Afterwards, Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661) was selected as the fourth Caliph. He was Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, and a significant minority of the early Islamic community believed that he should have been the Prophet's rightful successor; that the Muhammad's direct family had been divinely ordained. However, for unclear reasons he had been passed over for the leadership three times. The numerous accounts about Ali's tenure and the resultant civil war are often biased according to sectarian lines, mostly because of his place in Sh'ia ideology. Muawiyya, the able governor of Syria and now head of the Umayya clan, wanted revenge for Uthman's death, but the new caliph failed to punish the murderers; either because he lacked enough force, or accepted the rebels' argument that Uthman had not been a just ruler. This led not only the Ummayad clan but other Muslims to suspect Ali had been complicit in his predecessor's death. The two sides eventually met at the Battle of Siffin (July 657), where after three days of appalling slaughter, Ali agreed to arbitration. While most of Ali's supporters accepted the proposal, an extremist group called the Kharijites objected and left his ranks; some saw arbitration as a failure to assert his right to rule, while others were actually involved in Uthman's murder and feared the outcome. Ali met the same end as Uthman; he was murdered by the Kharijites in 661. Six month later Ali's son Hasan made a peace agreement with Mu'awiya that allowed him to establish himself as the undisputed Caliph; the first of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750). Yet the First Fitna solved nothing, and marked the beginning of a permanent schism within Islam between the Sunni and Shi'a forms. The Shi'at Ali ("party of Ali") henceforth claimed that the right of interpreting the Koran was confined to Muhammad’s descendants. This premise, among the fact that Mu'awiya rapidly broke the peace agreement with Ali's son, and then captured and executed Ali's grandson at the Battle of Karbala (October 680), galvanized Shi'a Islam as a distinct religious sect with its own collective memory, that would in time develop unique ritual practices and doctrinal beliefs. The Umayyad Caliphs had their own corresponding party of supporters, called Sunnites ("habit" or orthodox practice), who believed that doctrinal authority changed hands with the Caliphate. The first Umayyad Caliph rapidly suppressed resistance to the new regime, and the Shi’a movement was driven underground. For a long time the Shi'ites remained a embattled dissident faction within the Islam, but in the 10th-century developed into a political force in their own right, especially with the establishment of Shi'a Fatimid Egypt. Yet the Sunni-Shi'a schism should not be overstated; it rarely reached the intensity of rifts within Christianity, such as the Latin-Orthodox schism or Protestant-Catholic schism. Even when the Sunni Seljuks fought the Shi'a Fatimids, within each state their co-religionists were for the most part politically marginalized, rather than persecuted, and the two communities usually lived side by side without rancour. It has only been in recent decades that Sunni–Shi'a relations have become characterised by violent conflict. Under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), with its capital as Damascus, the Muslim Arab conquests rolled on. In north-west Africa, they established a new forward base at Kairouan in 670, about 60-miles from Byzantine Carthage; it would later be home to one of Africa’s greatest mosques. The Byzantines mounted an effective, if short-lived, resistance to the Muslim advance by making an alliance with their traditional regional enemy, the nomadic Moors (Berbers) of the north-west African interior. Arab forces were nevertheless able to capture Carthage in 698; the city was once again destroyed and remained a ruin for the nearly two centuries. By 709 the whole region was firmly in Arab hands and the Moors had begun process of adopting this potent new faith; Islam would rapidly penetrate nearly all segments of Moorish society, perhaps eased by their cultural similarities to the Bedouin. The final thrust of expansion in the west began with the short journey across the strait into Visigothic Spain in 711. The conquest is notable for its brevity and the unreliability of the sources. After the death of the Visigothic king Wittiza (702-710), Spain descended into civil war between his two son and a usurper called Roderic (d. 712) who had seized the capital of Toledo. This promising situation did not go unnoticed by the Arabs of north-west Africa. In 711 the Arab commander Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the Straits of Gibraltar with an army 15,000 strong, made up of mostly of Moors; "Gibraltar" is named after him, Jebel Tariq ("mountain of Tariq"). After defeating and killing the Visigothic usurper Roderic at the river Guaddalete, the Arabs advanced, capturing city after city with little resistance. Within as little as two years, the Iberian Peninsula was almost entirely under Muslim control, all except the north where Christian Visigoths clung-on in the Cantabrian Mountains, alongside the ever-independent Basques. This tiny enclave of medieval Christian Spain would be the roots of the eventual Christian Reconquista ''(711–1492). By 717, Arab raiders were crossing the Pyrenees into the Frankish Realm. Ending the Muslim Tide in Eastern Europe (717-768) In the Islamic onslaught on the world, only in one campaign were the Arab armies definitively and consistently unsuccessful; the conquest of Constantinople itself. After seizing the island of Rhodes in 670, the Muslims besieged the Byzantine capital for the first time between 674 and '78. By all accounts, this was more accurately a 5-year naval-blockade rather than a proper siege. The Arab fleet was driven-off in the end when the Byzantines unleash a new secret weapon; ''Greek Fire. Its invention is traditionally credited to a Syrian chemist called Kallinikos, who fled to Constantinople when the province was overrun by the Arabs. This flammable liquid could be sprayed or lobbed at enemy ships with devastating results, almost impossible to extinguish and burning even while floating on water. Greek Fire was considered such a state-secret that even today we don't know it's make-up, though it was almost certainly petroleum-based. Four decades later the Arabs were back beneath the mighty Theodosian Walls, this time in earnest, with 80,000 men and as many as 1,800 ships; the Siege of Constantinople (717–718). During the intervening years since Emperor Heraclius (d. 641), the Byzantines had squandered their strength in chaotic squabbles over the throne. Of ten emperors, one died of dysentery, and the rest were overthrown or murdered; one of them, Justinian II (705-11), was overthrown twice. In this desperate hour of need, Leo III (717-741) was elevated to the purple in a bloodless coup; his predecessor was allowed to retire to a monastery. Leo was a man of humble birth who had risen quickly through the imperial ranks to governor of the militarised province of Anatolia. He had successfully resisted Arab attacks on his territory, spoken fluent Arabic, and possessed a keen understanding of Arab mind. Leo would provide the lone bright-spot in the military history of this period, going on to outsmart the besiegers at every turn. The best chance of taking Constantinople was via the significantly lower sea walls of the imperial harbour, rather than the Theodosian Walls. The Arab fleet attempted to sailed-up the Hellespont to encircle the city, before launching an assault on the imperial harour. However, Leo deployed the Byzantine navy and sank over 20 Arab transport-ships with Greek Fire. While the fleet was able to blockade the city, there was no assault. In order to hamper the besieging army outside the Theodosian Walls, Leo then negotiated an alliance with a traditional enemy of Byzantium; the Bulgars now occupying Thrace. In common cause against the Arabs, the Bulgars constantly harassed their supply-lines and foraging parties throughout an exceedingly harsh winter, causing famine and plague in the Arab camp. In the spring, the Umayyad Caliph sent relief-force to reinforce the siege: 700 ships laden with supplies sailed from Egypt, while a fresh army of 20,000 men began marching through Anatolia. Both ended in disaster. With the Arab navy overstretched, this second fleet was mostly crewed by Christians, who began deserting to the Byzantines upon their arrival at Constantinople, bringing valuable information about the disposition of the Arab reinforcements. Leo launched his fleet against the new Arab fleets; crippled by the defections and helpless against Greek fire, the Arab ships were destroyed or captured along with the supplies they carried. On land too the Byzantines were victorious, ambushing the advancing Arab relief-force in the mountainous terrain near Nicomedia. With these disasters, the Arabs were forced to abandon the siege after thirteen months. The retreat was plagued by calamities too: the Buglars fell upon the Arabs as they were making for their ships, killing 20,000 men according to some reports; and most of the fleet was destroyed on the return either by storms or the Byzantine navy. It is said that less than 30,000 men limped back to Islamic lands. Historians often include this siege to be among the most important battles in European history. Although regular raids on Byzantine territories continued, they were directed at booty, rather than outright conquest, and the frontier between the two empires gradually stabilized along the line of the Taurus and Antitaurus Mountains. The Byzantine capital's survival preserved the Empire as a bulwark against Islamic expansion into Europe until the 15th century, when it fell to the Ottoman Turks. Moreover, without the superiority of the Byzantine navy the Mediterranean would have become an "Arab lake", with incalculable consequences for European trade. Nevertheless, the Byzantines failed to exploit their success by launching a counter-attack of their own against the Arabs. Having just saved Constantinople, Emperor Leo III promptly turned around and unleashed a religious firestorm that would hold-back a Byzantine revival until the mid-9th-century; the Iconoclasm Controversy (726-842). Ending the Muslim Tide in Western Europe (717-768) The Frankish Realm was by far the strongest power in the post-Roman west. However, for centuries political structures were fragile things, dependent on strong kings; ruling everywhere was a very personal activity. The Merovingian custom of divided inheritance did not help, resulting in endemic internecine fighting. Although there was dynastic continuity after Clovis, power steadily seeped away from the Merovingian kings towards the warrior-aristocracy, upon whom they relied for military support. Aristocratic political maneuvering centred on the four royal courts; Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy, and Aquitaine. The last Merovingian who was a real protagonist, Childeric II, was murdered in 675. Afterwards, an aristocratic leader of the court, called the Mayor of the Palace, ''accumulated more and more power. Beginning as chief advisor to the king, they steadily added to their duties, commanding royal armies, tutoring royal princes, and even choosing which Merovingian would succeed to the throne. The Mayors inevitably substituted their own interest for those of their king, who became little more than a legitimising figure; we'll see a similar pattern again in 12th-century Japan, resulting in the rule of the Shoguns. To maintain their position, the Mayors obviously needed strong support among the other Frankish nobles, and this is also the period when we see the clear emergence of lord-vassal relationships so characteristic of the Feudal System. By the late-7th-century, the old internecine fighting between Merovingian kings had transitioned into a struggle for dominance between the ''Mayors of the four royal courts. Pepin II (d. 714), Mayor of Austrasia won-out in the end, defeating the forces of Neustria and Burgundy at the Battle of Tertry (687). Henceforth, his family came to overshadow the Merovingian royal line. He can be seen with hindsight as the founder of a new Carolingian Dynasty (714-987), though it takes its name from his son, Charles Martel (Latinised as Carolus). Pepin was marched in his power only by Odo the Great (d. 735), Duke of Aquitaine, a formidable operator in both the Frankish and Visigothic politics. After Pepin's death, his heir was an 8-year-old grandchild under a regent, which jeopardized the Carolingian hegemony, with rivals using the opportunity to their own advantage; Neustrian nobles sought political independence, Odo of Aquitaine tried to increase his holdings, and the pagan Saxons raided as far west as the Rhine. The situation was rectified by Pippin’s illegitimate son, Charles Martel (718-741), who claimed his father's position as the power behind the throne after a three year civil war. Charles had gained strong support for his usurption among the Austrasians, primarily for his military prowess and ability to keep them well supplied with booty from raids and conquests; his moniker Martel means "the Hammer". Despite this turbulent transition, the Frankish Realm was evidently pretty solid at its base. It is clear from the source, that Charles Martel was active throughout the Frankish realm, intervening a long way from his power-base at the Austrasian court; now the only court. His government was complex and document based in a very Roman way; in systematic record-keeping, it's hard not to sense obsession, rather than purpose, with little evidence of keeping documents for future reference. At the same time, Charles was an enthusiastic patron of the Christian Church, actively supporting the missionary work of Bishop Boniface of Mainz on the Germanic frontier, in the hope that conversion would tame the heathens. The solidity of the Frankish realm was at least in part due to the constraints on aristocratic ambitions. Their political manoeuvring, however self-interests, revolved above all around the royal court and twice yearly royal assemblies; those who failed to attend risked being seen as enemies, or worse still, as being nobodies. It was a long time aristocrats developed strong local lordships; territories dominated by a single landowner which could operate as autonomous power-bases. Indeed early Frankish nobles seemed more concern with the amount of land, rather than where it was. This made going-it-alone was inconceivable, so the dice were weighted in favour of central power. Meanwhile, in recent decades, there had emerged a new threat to the Frankish Realm; Muslim Spain. By 718, Arab armies were pushing northward, and a year later had a foothold beyond the Pyrenees at Narbonne on the Mediterranean coast. Their first major incursion into Frankish territory came in 721, when they besieged the Acquitaine capital of Toulouse for three months, until Duke Odo broke the siege and drove them off. This defeat did not stop their raiding, with one party reach as far as Burgundy in 725. The next major incursion came in 732, with the Arabs this time besieging Bordeaux. Duke Odo again tried to fend them off, but was defeated, and the city was sacked and plundered. Odo suffered two subsequent defeats, and was left in the end with no choice but to appeal to Charles Martel for help, which Charles only granted after Odo agreed to submit to his authority. Charles met the Arab army at the Battle of Tours (732), about which there is little we can certain, other than that the Arab commander, Abd al-Raḥmān, was killed, and his army was forced to retreat back to Muslim land. Charles certainly claimed a great victory to bolster his family's position. Tour was heavily mythologised in medieval Europe as the battle that saved Europe from Muslim invasion, and helped end the era of Islamic expansion; historian Edward Gibbon famously made the fanciful claim that if the outcome had been different, "the interpretation of the Qur'an would now be taught in the schools of Oxford". Most modern historians take a more nuanced view of the battle, that this was a major Arab raid for plunder, rather than an invasion, and raiding as far as the Rhône Valley continued for decades afterwards. It was more likely a major revolt by the Moor in Spain in 741 that ultimately convinced the Muslims that their empire had reached its natural limits. Tours was certainly a secondary defeat to the great losses at the Siege of Constantinople of 717. Charles Martel still ruled on behalf of Merovingian kings, though they had no power at all by now. His son and successor Pepin III (743-769) maintained this fiction at first, but in 751 judged it possible simply to take power himself; he was elected king by an assembly of Frankish nobles, and the last Merovingian king was forced into a monastery. Despite the little power the Merovingians had, the tradition of their rule was 250 years old, and the family had an eminence that was both hard to pinpoint and impossible to dismiss; Pepin was a usurper. His solution was to seek legitimacy through the Christian Church. Pope Stephen II (d. 757) granted his support, famously saying "he who holds the power, should wear the crown", and Bishop Boniface of Mainz anointed him king with sacred oil. Pepin added to his legitimacy three years later, when the pope himself traveled all the way to Paris to anoint him a second time. Such direct involvement in the dynastic politics of Europe was a significant step for the Church, but it benefited both sides; without the support of the Church, the Carolingians were just another aristocratic family, even if by far the most prominent one; while the Papacy was looking for a new secular protectors, as relations with Byzantium were particularly strained over their support of Iconoclasm. Rome drew dividend on its investment almost immediately. The Lombards had conquered Byzantine Ravenna in 751, and were now demanding tribute from Rome. The Pope appealed to Pepin, who invaded Italy in 756, and quickly drove the Lombards from Ravenna. Pepin then granted the Pope temporal power over all the territories encompassed by Rome and Ravenna; the so-called ''Donations of Pepin ''(757) has formed the legal basis of the Papal State ever since, albeit today in a much reduced form. An firm alliance between the Carolingians and the Church had been formed. From it stemmed the reform of the Frankish Church, and further conversion in Germany. Although unquestionably one of the most powerful and successful rulers of his age, Pepin's reign has been largely overshadowed by that of his son, the towering figure of early medieval Europe, Carlemagne. Ending the Muslim Tide in the East (717-768) Folloing the Arab conquest of Sassanid Persia in 651, their generals continued sporadically eastward. In the Caucasus, the Muslims fought a series of wars against the Turkic Khazar Khaganate (650-969), until the frontier gradually settled down around 737. In what is now Afghanistan, they conquered Herat in 652 and Kabul in 664. On the Indian subcontinent, they reached the lower Indus Valley by 711, but this region, separated from the rest of India by desert, proved a poor stepping stone for further conquest, and Islam got no further for three centuries until the Ghaznavids. North of the Himalayas, the frontier of the Islam world gradually settled down along the Oxus River, after a victory over a Tang Chinese army at the Battle of Talas (751) in modern Uzbekistan. For the Arabs, an interesting fringe benefit of Talas was that Chinese prisoners-of-war revealed the secrets of Chinese paper-making technology; or so the story goes. Certainly paper was being manufactured in Baghdad by 794, fueling a book revolution in the Islamic world. On all fronts, in Western Europe, Central Asia, Anatolia and in the Caucasus, the tide of Arab conquest at last came to an end in the mid-8th-century. Whatever brought it to an end, and sometimes their defeats showed they had overstretched themselves, the Islamic conquest remains an astonishing achievement. And conquest was only the beginning of Islam's impact on the world, for great traditions of Muslim civilization were to be built on its conquests. Category:Historical Periods